HIMSS 2011

Recap of HIMSS11: Brian Dolan from Mobihealth news reported that there was "renewed energy" and that Himss is back after 2 years in the doldrums due to the financial crisis and recession.  You certainly could not tell from booth 2087. Lesson learned, don't sign up at the last minute without some plan to be near the action. Location, location, location! One of the booths near us reported only one good contact in 3 days. The silver lining for us was our Mobile Centric offering, which is hot in healthcare at the moment.  Speaking of mobile or health, it seemed virtually every company at the show had a mobile aspect to their offerings.  Most of it was simplistic and not very compelling.  We were demonstrating live connectivity between a wide range of Bluetooth vital sign devices including thermometers, blood pressure monitors, blood sugar glucometers, pulse odometers, weight scales, and ECG.  We were demonstrating this live on Motorola Droid, DroidX, Samsung Galaxy Tab, Google Nexus S, LG Optimus, and HTC EVO.  Additionally, we were demonstrating live interfaces of that data to both Google Health and our HIPAA compliant Call Center Alert System Database. Unlike our neighbors we were fortunate to have a steady stream of attendees and exhibitors interested in testing and discussing the systems.  Our  own Hospital of University of Pennsylvania cardiac nurse, Coleen Riley, performed hundreds of vital sign tests on willing "patients".  Overall, HIMSS was a great experience, we met some wonderful people and had the opportunity to share our vision of Mobile Health Monitoring Systems.